A Story for Sunday

Continued from here.

When last we met my little family was flying off on a great trip to Montreal, or to our doom, whichever came first. Amazingly, I felt just fine about the trip, excited and calm the whole way there. Our trip was also totally and completely uneventful. When we arrived in Montreal, we were greeted by blue skies, tulips and family. We had a great time, seeing the sights like the botanical gardens, the Olympic stadium, Riding up the St. Laurence on a river boat, barbecuing with family, and more things like digging into deep dark family secrets, just your usual vacation. Ha! The days were delightful, but at night, I had long, vivid disturbing (not to mention weird) dreams such as mafia hit men pursuing us. In one I found my daughter drowned in a bathtub and woke with a start, my heart pounding. Each day I would wake uneasy but soon we would be busy and all nagging worrisome feelings would fizzle away.
Finally the day we were to return home came. That morning, I felt extremely uneasy. I tried to ignore the feeling. I tried to squash it like a little bug, but no matter what I tried to do, the feeling stayed, and grew, until we were at the airport, saying our goodbyes, and I was literally about to jump out of my skin I was so nervous. We sat down in our seats on the flight out from Montreal to Chicago. As we waited for the plane to depart, I fidgeted. I felt like my brain had a bunch of bees buzzing around in it and I was trying so hard to think through the static, but my girl was having a hard time sitting still too and distracted me even more. Eventually, I decided to read something. I pulled out the magazine in the pocket in front of me and opened it up to a page about tornadoes. Um, not exactly the reading material to soothe my troubled nerves. I stuffed the magazine back in the rack and tried to distract myself and the 5 year old with some games.
Before we knew it, we had landed in Chicago. We hustled and bustled to our next flight, and soon found ourselves seated in the back of the plane, maybe six to ten rows from the tail. Right across from our seats was a stewardess station. We start our voyage with the usual demonstration of how to use the oxygen masks, where the exits are, etc. The part people ignore, except for very nervous people who are trying not to fly to their doom. I was truthfully starting to get the nerves under control a bit. It was our last flight and we would soon be home, safe and sound. Hopefully. If only my darling daughter weren't bouncing off the walls by this point and kicking the seat in front of us at 50 kicks per minute. I was trying to stop her and worrying about the poor blond lady ahead of her. Meanwhile, it was looking foggy and it was raining, which didn't help make life any easier. Not too long after taking off, the stewardesses started serving dinner. This was years ago, back when you could have a dinner knife on a plane and all. Since we were at the back of the plane, we were among the last to be served.
We began our dinner and with the kid distracted by food, I was finally able to calm down a bit more. If it weren't for the occasional turbulence, I think I might have gotten control of myself altogether. A stewardess brought a cart and parked it in the station across from ours, having finished her rounds with it. Just then, the little phone in her booth rang. She picked up the receiver. Someone on the other end said something and her face dropped into a concerned frown. She said something in agreement which I didn't hear, as I was busy telling my husband that we were doomed. Well, technically, I said it in Spanish and a more faithful to the sentiment translation would be "We are so screwed!" Meanwhile, the stewardess hung up, pulled down a seat, and buckled herself in as I thought, "We're going to die" and my husband was asking me what was the matter. I didn't get much of an answer out before the pilot came over the intercom, announced that we needed to all put on our seat belts as there was rough weather ahead and they had gotten permission to drop 10,000 feet to a safer altitude. As he spoke, I belted up my girl, then myself, and the moment the pilot hung up, the engines screamed and we were plummeting, rapidly... to our doom?
More next week!